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Jack the Lad

Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1986
Original album - Alternative
Producer - Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - Please 2001 reissue Further Listening 1984-1986 bonus disc
Other releases - b-side of single "Suburbia"

In an interview with Andrew Sullivan, Neil stated quite clearly what this song is about: "'Jack the Lad' is about being an individual, daring to do what you want to do. The song refers to Lawrence of Arabia, Oscar Wilde, and Kim Philby. It's also about the application of the idea of individuality to masculinity and not worrying too much about falling down." Elsewhere Neil has said that each of the historical figures referred to in the song "followed their own instincts and philosophies rather than simply obey rules or follow accepted practice." Obviously the Boys find this quality extremely admirable.

A British correspondent tells me that "Jack the Lad" is a common British expression for what Americans might call an "Regular Joe"—except Jack the Lad is very much a man on the move. Generally a working-class guy, he's more successful and has more money than you'd expect. Popular with men and women alike, he's streetwise and may not be entirely trustworthy, but he's so likeable that he's always forgiven. As Neil puts it, "When you're a Jack the Lad type, you can be the fool." In short, he seems to get away with it, whatever "it" is. On a purely musical note, the opening piano motif is, in Neil's words, "a pastiche of Erik Satie." In fact, the chord progression around which the song is built comes from the French composer's Trois Gymnopédies.

Annotations

"Jack the lad" is, as related above, a well-known expression in Britain. Its precise meaning seems to vary depending on who's talking. The website Urban Dictionary describes a "Jack the lad" as "a bit of a bad boy, or so he thinks." Elsewhere he's described as a "smooth operator," a "brash, boisterous fellow," or as a guy who's "cocky and self-confident." I don't think there's an exact American slang equivalent, although the term "hot dog" (a guy who's really good at something, knows it, and doesn't hesitate to let you know it, too) may come close. Regarding its use in this song, Neil has stated, "When I say, 'Are you only Jack the lad?', I'm saying: are you just messing about?" But much later, in his book One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem, Neil says that he thinks of the Jack the Lad character "as a confident, rule-breaking, individualist maverick who is inevitably going to come to a sticky end."
Neil has also noted that he was inspired to use "Jack the Lad" as the title of a song after hearing it in the 1985 Big Audio Dynamite single "E=MC²" (a track itself musically influenced by "West End Girls"), in which the phrase appears in one of several samples of dialogue taken from the 1968 film Performance (not to be confused with the PSB concert film of the same name).
Also as noted above, Neil has referred to the opening piano motif as "a pastiche of Erik Satie," and indeed that as well as the song's overall chord progression are highly reminiscent of Gymnopédie Number 1—one of the Trois Gymnopédies written in 1887 by French composer Satie. In addition, the melody bears a passing similarity to that work, but closer comparison reveals that the melodies are not at all the same.
"Lawrence in the desert" – A reference to T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935), better known as "Lawrence of Arabia," a British hero of the First World War. Lawrence was a highly enigmatic figure, in many ways a notorious iconoclast and nonconformist who often clashed with this superiors—a man who would, in the words of the song, "play with fire." As it turns out, Lawrence is just the first of the historical figures of this type who are invoked in the lyric.
"Telling lies in public, breaking codes at home" – Neil has said that these lines refer specifically to Lawrence of Arabia ("The second verse refers to the fact that Lawrence of Arabia is supposed to have been homosexual"). Some have speculated—apparently incorrectly—that they might be possible allusions to Alan Turing (1912-1954), a brilliant British mathematician and logician who played a key role in cracking the German "Enigma" code during World War Two. After the war, a conviction for homosexual offenses caused him to lose his security clearance, and he was forced to choose between imprisonment and "chemical castration." He chose the latter, but the resulting "treatments" so depressed him that he committed suicide by cyanide. (Actually, there's some uncertainty whether it was suicide or an accident, but the general historical consensus is indeed suicide.) The Boys would, however, go on to make Turing the central figure in their song-cycle A Man from the Future.)
"To feast with panthers every night" – A line adapted from Oscar Wilde, who in his 1897 apologia De Profundis wrote of his scandalous life, "It was like feasting with panthers. The danger was half the excitement."
"Philby in the desert" – An ambiguous reference to both Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby, a British intelligence agent who became a spy for the Soviets (and who for a time was stationed in the Middle East), and his father, Arabian explorer Harry St. John Bridger Philby. Neil has acknowledged the dual, ambiguous nature of the allusion.

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